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THE FAMILY AND SLAYERT. 

BY A NATIVE OF THE SOUTH-WEST. 



The Family is a divine institution for the mainte- 
nance, comfort, and improvement of the human race 
on earth, and its due preparation for heaven. It is 
constituted differently from every other association, 
and is endowed with ample powers for the accom- 
plishment of its high design. Its beginning was in 
Paradise, and it has proved man's richest source of 
earthly blessing since his fall. Patriarchal religion 
was sustained by its instrumentality. By the law of 
Moses it was assigned an honorable position in the 
church and the state. In the moral law the Fifth 
Commandment defines its duties, while the Seventh 
guards its purity. The Xew Testament surrounds it 
with clearer light and more solemn sanctions. All 
history attests its wide-working power for good or 
evil. The predicted renovation of the world will be 
largely secured by it. It is the germ of the church, 
and the state, and is both sacred and secular in its 
character. Society has risen to the highest elevation, 
or sunk to the deepest debasement, as family obli- 
gations have been respected or violated. 

Universal ante-diluvian degeneracy gi'ew out of 
vitiated domestic life, and was but a dark premonition 
of what succeeding ages have experienced from the 
same potent cause. The family is an ever-flowing 
fountain of weal or woe. Its responsibilities, toils, 
joys, sorrows, smiles, tears, hopes, and solicitudes, 
form the chief interest of life. Its pre-eminent pur- 



^-'jo 'J fee 



2 THE FAMILY AND SLAVERY. 

pose, however, is to preserve, diffuse, and perpetuate 
the saving knowledge of God. " The Lord established 
a testimony in Jacob, and a law in Israel, which he 
commanded our fathers that they should make known 
to their children, that the generation to come might 
know them ; who should arise and declare them unto 
their children, that they might set their hope in God, 
and not forget the Avorks of God, but keep his com- 
mandments."— Ps. 78: 6, 7, 8. 

The relations of the family state are those of hus- 
band and wife, parent and child, brother and sister, 
and master and servant. The first is voluntarily 
formed, the second and third are derived from it, and 
all three are perpetual, except as God shall dissolve 
them. The last is not essential to the family, and un- 
like the others, has its origin and perpetuity not in 
nature, but in circumstances. The necessities of so- 
ciety have generally required its existence, but no 
class of men has been divinely and specifically desig- 
nated to fill it. The divine law, however, requires 
that where it exists, the master shall remember that 
he has a master in heaven, and shall consequently 
treat the servant as a rational and accountable fellow 
man, forbearing threatening, showing kindness, and 
giving him as a creature of God, and not of human 
law or custom, what is just and equal ; and that the 
servant shall act honestly, faithfully, and with good 
will. Servitude on such conditions may be greatly 
advantageous to the parties concerned. 

Slavery is involuntary, hereditary, and unrequited ser- 
vitude. It is the exaction of service without con- 
sent, and gives one man a claim to the life-long labor 
of another, with authority to enforce that claim, if 
necessary, with severe punishment. It annihilates 
a man's ownership in himself, and makes him, by 
force, the property of another. The master in the ex- 



THE FAMILY AND SLAVERY. 3 

drcise of his prerogative, may, and in the great majo- 
rity of cases must, decide where the slave shall live ; 
in what comfort or discomfort ; what he shall eat and 
wear; where and when and how hardly he shall toil; 
where he shall go ; what connections he may form, and 
how long they shall last; what amusements he may 
have; what penalties he shall suffer; what shall be his 
opportunities for intellectual improvement; Avhere and 
when, and how long he shall worship, if at all; and 
what shall be the destiny of his children after him. 
He can transfer him at will to another, and is liable 
to have him sold for debt by the law of the land. <'A 
slave," says the Louisiana code, "is in the power of 
the master to whom he belongs. The master may sell 
him, dispose of his person, his industry, his labor. 
He can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire any 
thing but what must belong to his master." All 
modern slave laws arc formed chiefly for the benefit 
of the master, and with but secondary reference to the 
welfare of the slave. They confer almost absolute 
power without any certain commensurate responsi- 
bility. No true analogy can be traced between mas- 
tership over slaves, and control over children and 
apprentices. The right to service in the latter cases 
is limited and temporary ; may readily be abrogated 
if abused; is granted for educational purposes, and 
implies no ownership; while the slave code author- 
izes unchanging bondage, with scarce the shadow 
of protection and profit to the slave. Slavery was in- 
troduced, and still exists, without a divine sanction. 
It has been suffered to remain like many other great 
evils, and has been placed in this country under moral 
influences, which, if not resisted, will terminate it. It 
existed when the laws of Moses were given, but they 
secured such privileges to the slave, and placed such 
restraints on the master, that for a considerable period 



4 THE FAMILY AND SLAVERY. 

before the time of the Savior, it had entirely ceased 
among the Jewish people; and no one acquainted 
with the genius of Christianity, doubts for a moment 
that its universal prevalence will banish the evil from 
the earth. Slavery has generally originated in vio- 
lence, and has been maintained on the principle that 
might makes right. Persons of every rank, station, 
and color, have thus been enslaved, and however differ- 
ing at first, have soon been reduced to a common bar- 
barism. The relation of master and slave is not found- 
ed in nature, but is the arbitrary creation of human 
law, and varies in its character according to the cir- 
cumstances, the caprices, or the cupidity of the mas- 
ters. It is different in Africa, in Turkey, in Brazil, in 
Eussia, and in the United States, and yet, every where 
it is identical in the fact, that it divests man of true 
manhood, and makes him the chattel of another. It is 
a violation of all natural rights. Man, as created and 
dependent, derives all his rights from the Creator, and 
He never would have conferred any one, which, in its 
exercise, would destroy the substantial equality Ho 
has established among men, and spread havoc among 
his great social arrangements. When He defined 
man's position to the lower creation. He said : ^^ Have 
dominion over the fish of the sea, and the fowl of the 
air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the 
earth;" but when He prescribed his duty toward his 
fellow man. He said: " Tliou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself.'' If slavery is not of divine origin, it can be 
nothing less than a daring and impious usurpation of 
power over man, which, sooner or later, will meet 
with unsparing retribution. Slavery can not bo 
rightly estimated by the conduct of a few kind mas- 
ters, who are, to a certain extent, involuntarily con- 
nected with it, and who would gladly be emancipated 
from it; nor by the modified character it assumes 



THE FAMILY AND SLAVERY. 5 

under Christian institutions and civilization, which 
are opposed to it; nor by the fact that Providence has 
overruled it for some good, as has been the case with 
other admitted evils; but it must be judged according 
to the divine standard, by the principles on which it 
rests, and which give it life and strength. Based on 
the assumption of a right of property in man, it can 
not but be pregnant with suffering and wrong. Un- 
der the operation of those leading corrupt feelings 
which it fosters, the love of ease, the love of power, 
and the love of money, all the possibilities of evil it 
contains may at any time be developed, and it may 
fairly be held responsible for them all. 

It is the purpose of this tract to trace, in a kind, 
candid, and truthful manner, the influence of slavery 
upon the diversified relations and interests of the 
Family; and to show not only what in some cases it 
does, but what in any ordinary case it may do. If 
both proceed from God, a beautiful and helpful con- 
cord will be found to exist between them; but if either 
is the result of depravity, there will be found only 
discord and every evil work. 

1. The Family is founded in marriage, the most 
intimate, endearing, and sacred union, that can be 
formed on earth. The nuptial contract, as sanctioned 
by both divine and human laws, binds the parties to 
live in a peculiar manner for each other, till they are 
separated by death. The husband is to honor his 
wife — to love her as his own body — to love her as 
Christ loved the Church; and the wife is to devote 
herself in love, reverence, aiTH* nhn<9BS33B8fcll§iBlj^ce, to 
her husband. The manifestation and reciprocation 
of sympathy, affection, and kind offices, should be 
tender, and constant, and secure from all interference. 
In the lowest point of view, marriage is the most 
important of earthly arrangements, and from a divine 



6 THE FAMILY AND SLAVERY. 

stand-point appears of transcendent consequence. 
By it alone the race can be legitimately continued. 
But corporeal life would scarce be a blessing, were 
not a higher life connected with it; and man has been 
invested with capacity for reproduction, chiefly that 
by it he may multiply the moral image of the Creator. 
Through this relation both earth and heaven may be 
peopled with unnumbered myriads who shall forever 
be blessed in wearing the likeness of God. It is from 
this and kindred facts, that marriage has been hon- 
ored by being chosen as the symbol of the holy, 
beatific, and indissoluble union between the Redeemer 
and the redeemed. A strict and high regard for its 
sacredness must lie at the foundation of a well or- 
dered and virtuous state of society. Without it 
human beings might herd together impelled by in- 
stinct and appetite, but sensuality would usurp the 
domain of reason, and there would be an entire and 
perpetual absence of endearment, sympathy, cour- 
tesy, confidence, and respect. History affords no ex- 
ample of a prosperous, refined, and happy people, 
where the marriage bond has not been cherished and 
held inviolable ; but its pages are crowded with dark 
pictures of nations degraded and ruined on account 
of the wide-spread licentiousness following its neglect 
and desecration. 

■: Slavery does not recognize marriage. No provision 
can be made for its formation, celebration, or contin- 
uance ; and no suitable opportunities afforded for the 
fulfillment of its engagements^* The voluntariness 
and independence necessary to take the conjugal vow 
can not belong to slaves. To accord them the ordi- 
nary rights and privileges of marriage would impair 
il^ir value as property, diminish the master's control, 
and injuriously affect his ownership. A just pro- 



THE FAMILY AND SLAVERY. 7 

tection granted to this relation would do mncli for 
the overthrow of slavery. While marriage can not 
be legalized, the instincts which prompt to it can not 
be eradicated, but are developed in greater vigor as 
they lack the guidance of intelligence and moral 
principle. The consequence is a state of society, if 
it be not a contradiction to speak of such a thing, 
without purity, refinement and virtue. 'No solemn 
bond unites the parties, no child is born in lawful 
wedlock. The primary relations of life are dis- 
honored, and the obligations belonging to them are 
neither understood nor fulfilled. The Presbyterian 
Synod of Kentucky, in an address to its churches, on 
this subject, in 1835, spoke thus: "All the marriage 
that can be allowed among the slaves, is a mere 
arrangement, voidable at the master's pleasure, and 
very frequently made void. In this way they are 
brought to consider the marriage arrangement as a 
thing not binding, and they act accordingly. Many 
of them are united without the sham and forceless 
ceremony which is sometimes used. To use their 
own phraseology, they ' talce up with ' each other, 
and live together as long as suits their convenience 
or inclination. This wretched system of concubinage 
inevitably produces the most revolting licentious- 
ness.""^ The first effect of slavery on the family is to 
take away entirely its divinely established founda- 
tion. 

2. The unity and integrity of the family are essen- 
tial to the accomplishment of its beneficent design. 
Each household should be a little community sepa- 
rated from all others, with its own interests, duties, 
hopes, trials, and enjoyments. To attain this a man 
is required to "leave his father and mother and cleave 
unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh." Husbands 
are to " dwell with their wives/' and wives are to be 



*" THE TAMILT AND SLAVERT. 

" keepers at home, and to guide the house." "Those 
persons," says Baxter, "live contrary to the nature 
of this relation, who live a great part of their lives 
asunder. The offices which husband and wife Ire 
bound to perform for one another, are such as for the 

roof, like the offices of the members of the body for 
each other, which they can not perform if they arl 
dismembered and divided." Nor can children be 

sade able time being kept together. Their aifections 
would remain undeveloped, their wills undisciplined, 
their tempers ungoverned. But the Family cLi no 
be kept unbroken in the condition of slavery. The 

Xritv T"'"" "'-""^ property right is fatal to its 
integrity. Inconvenience and loss to the masters 
would be unavoidable, could it not be dissevered, and 
Its members scattered abroad at pleasure. It i not 

other the wife, and yet another the children ; or f all 

each shall live at a separate place. Some slave fam- 
Uies never meet togethcr,_others but in partand 
seldom, and then but for a short time. Thrdest^.t 
of the Creator in forming the domestic ties so tend?" 
so endearing, and so strong, is thoroughly frustrated 
Unexpected and distressing separations of hu baSs 
and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters 
Tl^^ ^"f If tly enforced. Slaves may not pos- 
sess that depth and delicacy of sensibility whfch 
comes from a fine and high culture, and may not In 

tantr'^''V"^l^ ''' ^"^"'^ - "tl^-^ °f BupYnor ad 
vantages; but the cool and barbarous severance of 
domestic bonds which takes place under the ord^narv 
opera ions of the slave codc,\hrough the necessS 
or misfortunes of masters who wfuld otherwl *;: 



THE FAMILY AND SLAVERY. 9 

kind, or the willful wickedness of such as are them- 
selves in bondage to lucre or lust, rasps and wrings 
such sensibilities as they have, and sometimes crushes 
the very life out of the heart. It is shocking to every 
just and generous sentiment of humanity. Those 
whom, for the noblest purposes, God has joined 
together, slavery ruthlessly puts asunder without 
ceremony, compunction, restraint, or fear. 

3. The affections, comforts, and hopes, belonging to 
a well regulated family, are the purest, sweetest, and 
richest, of an earthly kind. The most sober become 
cheerful and agreeable amid the kind and gentle min- 
istries of the family circle. The zest and wakeful 
interest of living center there. To share the glowing 
anticipations of an ingenuous courtship, the happy fes- 
tivities of the marriage season, the roseate joy that 
lights the bridal hours, the honest independence and 
pleasure that crown the new home of plighted love, 
the tender interest of the hour when the founts of 
parental feeling are first unsealed in the heart; to wit- 
ness the dawning intelligence of infancy, the cheering 
development of childhood, the unfolding promise of 
youth, the realization of parental hope in useful, vig- 
orous manhood ; to make provision for those lovingly 
dependent, and be twice blessed, in imparting it, and 
beholding the happiness it creates ; to dispense, and 
receive in return a generous hospitality ; to inter- 
change the heartfelt courtesies of refined society ; 
to pass the winged hours of morning blessing, and 
delightful evening intercourse at the fireside ; to cul- 
tivate those family friendships which enduringly knit 
Bouls together ; to see the formation of new compan- 
ionshii^s by the young, and the realization by the old 
of the oriental blessing, " Thou shalt see. thy children's 
children ; " to live and to worship under the exulting 
hope that the storms of life being past, the family shall 



10 THE FAMILY AND SLAVERY. 

meet unbroken in heaven ; these and kindred things 
are the blessed ingredients of the cup of life. And 
when unavoidable trials press heavily, when losses 
come, or sickness invades the happy circle, when 
treasures of infantile beauty or rij^er loveliness and 
worth are torn from the heart, and the graves of the 
household begin to multiply, the ministrations of 
affection, and the manifestation and reciprocation of 
warm and intelligent sympathy avail to divest trouble 
of its burden and sorrow of its sting. It occurred to 
the author, while preparing this tract, to be invited to 
what is termed a " golden wedding." A venerable 
couple called their children and grandchildren to- 
gether, to celebrate with them, the fiftieth anniver- 
sary of their marriage. They commenced life with 
few advantages, but under the divine blessing had 
attained a position of comfort, abundance, and useful- 
ness. A large family, trained in the paths of christian 
virtue, gathered around them on the happy occasion. 
Among their sons and sons-in-law, each of the learned 
professions, as well as several leading departments of 
business, were represented. All had prospered in this 
world, and most had secured an inheritance in a better 
world, when this should be past. The occasion was 
one of congratulation, gratitude, joy, and hope ; as full 
of blessing as any mere scene of earth can well be. 

To this whole class of purifying, cheering, en- 
nobling, and consoling influences and sentiments, the 
slave is by his very condition a stranger. His life is 
a dull, humdrum, plodding course of incessant and 
unrequited toil, unalleviated by tenderness, and un- 
brightened by hope. His marriage, if the concu- 
binage in which he lives can be dignified with such a 
name, is a mere affair of instinct and convenience, 
formed and existing at the will of another, sanctioned 
by no law, solemnized with no ceremonies, without 



THE FAMILY AND SLAVERY. 11 

protection, and liable to be broken up at any instant 
by avarice or caprice. His children are not his own, 
their chief end of life is to serve others. No tender 
concern attends their birth, no wakeful solicitude 
watches over their opening years, no paths of ad- 
vancement expand before them, no promise gilds 
their future. Their destiny is to wear out in hard 
toil. If they live they can not rise above their condi- 
tion, and when they die no hopes are buried in their 
graves. The blessings of memory and anticipation 
which attend a "golden wedding" can never belong 
to the slave, even if he should so struggle through 
the hardships of his lot as to reach old age. 

4. There is truly " no place like home." There the 
mind first comes into contact with the external world, 
and receives the most awakening and indelible im- 
pressions, and the habits are formed which in after 
years bind the soul as with bands of iron. There the 
duties, courtesies, and charities, are taught and prac- 
ticed which adorn life with grace and beauty. There 
the fire of patriotism is kindled. Even the locality 
acquires a kind of sacredness, and the memories that 
cling round it become the most undying in the heart. 
Home is the mold in which society is cast. A people 
may be great in philosophy, science, art, wealth, and 
power, but can have neither comfort, freedom, nor 
moral elevation, without those nurseries of true men — 
genuine christian homes. By divine direction, each 
Hebrew family was provided with an independent 
home, which no misfortunes nor vicissitudes could 
alienate beyond the year of Jubilee. The Anglo- 
Saxon legislation has given the citizen a domicile 
which even the monarch uninvited may not enter. 
It was the deep and changeless power of home that 
rang in the ancient battle-cry, '' Fight for your altars 
and your fires." The slave can have neither home 



12 THE FAMILY AND SLAVERY. 

nor home feelings and interests, in any true accepta- 
tion of the words. He has a place where he eats, 
and sleeps, and works, but it is not his own ; nothing 
beyond dull habit endears it to him ; he can not guard 
it from invasion, and he may be removed from it at 
any moment without consent or previous notice. His 
mind and heart have never been waked up by it. No 
tender and loving interest clusters around it, and he 
bears away no deep and warm recollections when he 
is forced to leave it. Slavery fills a land with families 
destitute" of homes. 

5. Home education is a law of nature. The pro- 
vision for it is ample and efficient in the domestic 
constitution, and the obligations to it are as untrans- 
ferable as parentage itself. The training of the child 
for both present and future existence, begins with its 
birth, and is carried on by what it sees, hears, and 
experiences, as well as by what it is directly taught. 
Children have a divinely-bestowed right to the best 
and earliest culture at home, and at school as far as 
circumstances will admit their attendance. Unedu- 
cated mind is miseducated. But what education can 
be given by slave parents, who are themselves thor- 
oughly untaught and ignorant, and who have neither 
time, means, nor oj^portunity afforded them to ascer- 
tain and discharge their duties? Their circumstances 
render the home education of their children an im- 
possibility. As for schools, they do not exist, nor 
could they, in any case, be provided without incur- 
ring severe legal penalties. They would be unde- 
sirable, unprofitable, and injurious, in the opinion of 
masters, for those whose main business in life is 
simple manual labor. By the condition to which 
slavery reduces the Family, it becomes the most 
gigantic institution for the promotion of human igno- 
rance. The waste and misapplication of mind which 



THE FAMILY AND SLAVERY. 13 

it produces are most appalling. "Where there is no 
vision the people perish." 

6. The Family is the appointed school for the dis- 
cipline of the race. Human nature has been so sadly 
perverted by the fall, that it universally starts wrong. 
The appetites and passions are excitable and inordi- 
nate, and the will is rebellious against just authority. 
Natural selfishness is averse to the feelings of good 
neighborhood, and ungoverned self-will to the duties 
of good citizenship. Men are born despots, and need 
to be taught the great truths of equality and disinte- 
rested love. The young should be disciplined to self- 
government, to a practical respect for the right of 
others, and to an obedient regard for the divine 
law. The Family is intended to be a little model 
Church and State, where this all-important work is 
to be done, and the parents are divinely appointed 
to perform it. They are invested with authority 
for this purpose; and its wise, consistent, aifection- 
ate exercise, accompanied with prayer for the divine 
blessing, rarely fails of the desired end. The slave 
code here arrogantly interferes between the parents 
and their children, depriving the former of their in- 
alienable authority, and substituting that of the mas- 
ter in its place; and taking the latter from the charge 
of their natural instructors and guardians, and scat- 
tering them without care or protection widely abroad. 
All Family government and discipline are denied the 
rising generation of slaves, and they grow up lawless 
and disobedient, requiring to be watched with sleep- 
less vigilance, and fitted for the destiny they attain as 
subjects for the lash, the prison, and the gallows. 

7. The Creator gave the Family its peculiar organ- 
ization, "that He might seek a godly seed;" IVIal. ii: 
15- and it stands unrivalled in its advantages for 
imparting early religious instruction. It furnishes 



14 THE FAMILY AND SLAVERY. 

ready access to the tender youthful mind : the parents 
to whom the children look with unquestioning con- 
fidence and love are constituted the instructors, and 
every day is the season for instruction. The public 
services of the sanctuary come in as a quickening 
auxiliary in this holy work. While divine grace 
does not confine itself to any description of means, it 
veiy largely blesses the faithful labors of the Family 
circle to the conversion of souls. Slavery counteracts 
this divine arrangement. It keeps the parents desti- 
tute of religious knowledge, and of all reasonable 
opportunities for obtaining it. They have no such 
control of themselves or their children that they can 
assume or fulfil any religious obligation to train them 
in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. The 
Synod of Kentucky, in the document already quoted, 
gives the following unquestionable testimony on this 
point: "The privileges of the gospel, as enjoyed by 
the white pojDulation of this land, consist in free access 
to the Scriptures^ a regular gospel ministry^ and domestic 
ineans of grace. ISTone of these is to any extent worth 
naming enjoyed by slaves. The law as it is here does 
not prevent free access to the Scriptures^ but ignorance, 
the natural result of their condition, does. The Bible 
is before them, but it is to them a sealed book. Yery 
few enjoy the advantages of a regular gospel ministry. 
They are, it is true, permitted generally, and often 
encouraged to attend uj^on the ministrations specially 
designed for their masters. But the instructions com- 
municated on such occasions are above the level of 
their capacities. They listen as to prophesyings in 
an unknown tongue. The preachers of their own 
order are still farther from ministering to their spir- 
itual wants, as these impart to them not of their 
knowledge, but of their ignorance; they heat their 
animal feelings, but do not kindle the flame of Intel- 



THE FAMILY AND SLAVERY. 15 

ligent devotion. There are no houses of worship 
exclusively devoted to the colored population. The 
galleries of our churches, which are set apart to their 
use, would not hold the tenth part of their numbers, 
and even these few seats are, in general, thinly occu- 
pied. Domestic means of grace are still more rare 
among them. Here and there a family is found whose 
servants are taught to bow with their masters around 
the fireside altar. But their peculiarly adverse cir- 
cumstances, combined with the natural alienation of 
their hearts from God, render abortive the slight 
efforts to induce their attendance on the domestic 
services of religion. And if we visit the cottages of 
those slaves who live apart from their masters, where 
do we find them reading the Bible, and kneeling to- 
gether before the throne of mercy? Family ordi- 
nances of religion are almost unknown amongst the 
blacks. We do not wish to exaggerate the description 
of this deplorable condition of our colored population. 
We know that instances of true piety are frequently 
found among them, but these instances we know to bo 
awfully disproportionate to their numbers, and to the 
extent of the means of grace which exist around 
them." Though written twenty years ago, and for a 
particular locality, this statement needs but a very 
slight modification to adapt it to the whole slave- 
hoTding portion of our country at the present day. 
The state of things it describes is the inevitable result 
of the operation of slavery on the religious welfare 
of the Family. 

\ 8 Slavery removes every safeguard usually thrown 
around the virtue of chastity. The penalties of the 
civil law, the intelligent fear of God, a correct esti- 
mate of the sanctity of marriage, a sense of self, 
respect, a regard for the good opinion of society, 
delicate feelings of honor, a sensitiveness to moral 



^^ THE FAMILY AND SLAVERY. 

^iTl^lfl^^" '*, *^' "^°"S'^* °^ *°««l^ °f defile- 
ment are all alike unknown in slave Families; and 

the consequence is, that the contamination of the most 

con-uptmg and ineradicable of all vices very iLlTv 

Class of human beings are deprived of their rightful 
natural position and privileges, and treated as ?^ 

A detail of the almost numberless facts .vhicl would 
d'Srg!''^ ^°^'°' -°^'^ "^^ ^^^^^^^' ^^-^'^.. and 
9 The pursuit of property for right ends, in right 
mea ure and by right means; and its use in arrange 
ments of comfort, convenience, refinement, and be- 
nevolence, has a great and constant bearing on the 

lm7' "T"^^' "T°"'y' '^''^'- «^ltivationrrespect- 
ability, and general good estate of the Family Of 

every favorable influence from this quarter slave 

Sr T l^vT'- ^™P'^'-*^ themselves, often 

ought and sod like beasts in the market, they are 

bound to pass through life content to own inasecLd- 

them Afi?K; • " ^"^ """^^ ^'^''* " ^'S^'^"* to -"ake 
them profitable in increasing the wealth of others. 

abilL „ ^"^.'' '"''' "' "" P^^'""-^ of respect- 

ability, a sense of social obligation, familiar inter- 

finlTrtrfh "1f^' ''"''°'" '' P"^^'^'*' - t^^te for tie 
fZrT' f-^'T'"^ °f Station, office, and power 
directly or indirectly exert a modifying ^^nd excitino^ 
.nfluence on the happiness, improvemeft, and ac om 
phshment of Families. But all these things are un- 
known to slaveFamilies. Their highest incitement to 
duty, and strongest dissuasive from evil, is the fear 
of the lash Duty is crowned with no noble rewards 
and punishment of the most degrading kind! i„.' 
fl cted under the influence of excited passions, w th 
but small regard to demerit. Slavery is a natural 



THE TAMILY AND SLAVERY. 17 

school for indolence, lying, dishonesty, intemperance, 
licentiousness-, and every low vice. The word slave 
itself has in every age been a synonym for degra- 
dation. Under a free government, and with fair 
opportunities, it would be difficult to limit domestic 
advancement, but as a system, slavery has no law of 
progress, and is defended by impregnable barriers 
against all attempts at social elevation. The slave 
code tacitly but decidedly confesses that the condition 
to which it reduces its victims is so abject, that but 
one other worse can be found, and that is death. If 
a free man commit a crime of a lower grade than a 
capital offence, yet above a misdemeanor or petty 
larceny, he may, as the consequence, lose his self- 
respect, impair his reputation, forfeit his property, or 
have his liberty restrained by imprisonment. If a 
slave commit an offence exactly similar, his social and 
civil standing are already so low that but one punish- 
ment can be found for him. He has never been taught 
or permitted to respect himself, and he cannot feel 
dishonored; he never was in good society, and has no 
reputation to lose ; he has no property with which to 
pay a fine ; imprisonment would but slightly abridge 
his liberty, for he never was free ; corporal punish- 
ment would be only what he was constantly threat- 
ened with, and what he often received. All that 
slavery has left by the loss of which he may be 
punished is life, and contrary to the divine law, for a 
whole round of inferior offences he suffers death. 
"What possible inducement can families have to rise 
under such a system? To borrow the energetic lan- 
guage of John Foster, "If a race can by absolute 
force be reduced to, and long hopelessly kept in a 
condition in which they are esteemed and treated as 
having no souls, except just enough for actuating 
their bodies as machines for the service of their 



tl THE FAMILY AND SLAVERY. 

masters, their whole moral being will subside to that 
level. Every thing refined, dignified, aspiring, and 
moral, will evaporate from the degraded mass. And 
such is very much the fact. Their perceptions are 
blunted — self-respect is unknown — their thoughts are 
groveling — their spirits servile — their passions gross — 
and habits corresponding. In the intermissions of 
their hard service their resource is childish revelry 
and coarse licentiousness. Their domestic relations 
are devoid of sanction and dignity, and can not have 
the due share of the permanent charities of life. As 
to their licentiousness, their being property subjects 
them to aggravation from one special cause, and that 
is that the corruption is promoted by being shared by 
their superiors." It is thus that slavery from its very 
nature crowds human nature down so low, that it 
becomes scarce a privilege for the slave to be ac- 
counted a man. 

11. The Sabbath was given to man in the garden 
of Eden as a twin-sister of blessing with the family, 
and they have ever since gone hand in hand in their 
ministry of good. The Sabbath was made for uni- 
versal man in every aspect of his earthly condition. 
It is emphatically the poor man's day, and to rob him 
of it is to take away one of heaven's richest benefac- 
tions. Its enlightened and faithful observance is in- 
dispensable to the instruction and government of 
the Family, and without it domestic and social igno- 
rance, disorder and debasement must reign. Slavery 
is in the highest degree unfavorable to its due observ- 
ance. If labor is not required on that day, as it 
may be, by the master, the slaves having given the 
week to toil, devote the sacred hours to sleep, to low 
social intercourse, animal indulgence, working for 
themselves, visiting, trading, and often to gambling, 
intemperance, and depredating on the property of 



THB FAMILY AND SLAVERY. |f 

others. They know nothing of the importance and 
obligations of the day, nor as to the proper method 
of its observance; and all its manifold and inestimable 
beneficial effects are lost to their Families. 

12. It is the glory of God that his government over 
mind is moral and not physical in its character. He 
recognizes each man's individuality and responsibility 
and governs him by motives addressed to his free 
will. The voluntariness of actions, when tested by a 
moral standard, is a prime element in their rectitude 
or their guilt. Involuntary or compulsory service is 
not acceptable to God. He would have each note of 
praise and each act of duty a grateful exercise of ap- 
preciative freedom. Slavery lays a vandal hand on 
the very idea of moral government. It makes the 
will of the master supreme, destroys freedom of 
choice, removes every inspiring motive to obedience, 
and proposes as the ultimate constraining reason for 
it the fear of brute force. God intended the Family 
to be a mighty instrument for the establishment and 
extension of his moral government on earth. He 
rules by authority blended with love. The parent for 
a time stands before the child in the place of God, and 
proper Family government prepares the child for 
intelligent subjection to the Divine government. The 
latter should be the pattern of the former. The lesson 
of the child towards the parent is just that of maturer 
years towards God, "not my will but thine be done." 
The absence of suitable parental instruction and 
authority in early years, produces irreligion in sub- 
sequent life. In the Family, as a primary school, 
the foundation of pious obedience must be laid. The 
utter perversion which slavery works in its constitu- 
tion, design, and arrangements, makes it a complete 
nullity in filling its high and glorious mission in this 
respect. 



20 THE FAMILY AND SLAVERY. 

Want of space forbids further enlargement on these 
and kindred topics. The germ of all the evils men- 
tioned is in the system, and the development will 
be rapid or protracted as circumstances favor or 
retard it. The domestic affections and interests seem 
to have suffered less than all others by the effects of 
the fall, and it is on them that slavery lays its most 
blighting grasp. Its capacity to destroy human hap- 
piness and improvement exceeds that of any other 
despotism ever existing, and proves it intrinsically 
evil, only evil, and that continually. 

But one side however has yet come under review. 
The Families of slaveholding communities suffer as 
certainly from this institution as those of the slaves. 
A retributive Providence often makes a guilty prac- 
tice itself prolific of evils. In a public address de- 
livered several years since, the Hon. Henry Clay of 
Kentucky, pronounced slavery to bo "A curse to the 

MASTER AND A WRONG TO THE SLAVE;" and a long 

array of facts would show that the curse is as sure 
and dej)lorable to the former as the wrong is to the 
latter. Did space permit, the succeeding propositions, 
briefly stated, might be elucidated and proved as 
clearly as any that have claimed attention. 

1. By reducing a part of the race to a servile and 
abject condition, principally for the sake of gain, 
slavery begets towards them, especially in the minds 
of the young, feelings of contempt and disgust incon- 
sistent with the divine command to "honor all men," 
subversive of true philanthropy, and productive of 
arrogance and pride. 

2. By removing the necessity for personal labor, 
and associating it with degradation, slavery en- 
courages idleness and its consequent vices in families, 
cuts the sinews of manly enterprize, and prevents a 
large amount of profitable activity. 



THE FAMILY AND SLAVERY. 21 

3. Holding females as property renders them help- 
less as Mo the preservation of purity and honor; 
and exposes young men particularly to irresistible 
temptations to licentiousness, poisonous to high moral 
principle, injurious to character, and ultimately de- 
structive to the soul. 

4. The unavoidable necessity for committing young 
children to the care of slaves as nurses, constitutes 
them, ignorant and degraded as they are, most 
efficient educators, particularly at a time w^hen the 
unwritten part of education — that of the looks, tones, 
gestures, manners, likes and dislikes — produces the 
most indelible impressions. Such training gives many 
a promising twig a hurtful bent from which it never 
recovers. Vicious principles, corrupt imaginations, 
and evil feelings become as fixed in the memory as 
if graven with a pen of iron on the rock for ever. 

5. The general working of slavery is fruitful of 
a large class of unhappy and unchristian tempers, 
against which every family should be guarded. Eev. 
Joseph C. Stiles, for many years a resident of different 
Slave States, and now Secretary of the Southern Aid 
Society, in a speech before one of the large ecclesias- 
tical bodies of the country, which was published by 
himself, testified, " In the master, slaveholding insen- 
Bibly tends to breed indolence, pride, impatience, 
irritability, hard-heartedness, and arbitrary temper. 
It tends to make the servant discontented, dishonest, 
deceitful ; to break down every high motive to general 
industry, as well as to all intellectual and moral cul- 
ture." A very different authorit}^, Avho will certainly 
not be accused of puritanism, Thomas Jefferson, in 
his Notes on Yirginia, page 139, says, " There must 
doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners 
of our people, produced by the existence of slavery 
among us. The whole commerce between master and 



22 THE FAMILY AND SLAVERY. 

slave is the perpetual exercise of the most boisterous 
passions, the most unrelenting despotism on the one 
part, and degrading submission on the other. Our 
children see this, and learn to imitate it, for man is 
an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all 
education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is 
learning to do what he sees others do. The parent 
storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of 
wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller 
slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and thus 
nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, can 
not but be stamped by it with its odious peculiarities. 
That man must be a prodigy who can retain his man- 
ners and morals undepraved by such circumstances." 

6. The tendency of slavery, in an economic point of 
view, is to enrich and aggrandize a few families while 
it impoverishes and degrades many. ■ The poor, who 
are free, suffer from it as well as the slaves. It pro- 
duces a condition of society in which free schools, the 
only means of popular education, are almost impos- 
sible. Wealth, and even the facilities of comfortable 
subsistence, are placed by it beyond the reach of mul- 
titudes ; and it creates an aristocratic class, without 
sympathy for the toiling masses. In certain respects 
it affords very great advantages to a few privileged 
ones, while, on the other extreme, it makes the pros- 
pect of improvement to the many hopeless. 

7. Slavery deteriorates true religion and impedes 
its progress. It ignores the Bible idea of universal 
brotherhood, and even the peculiar provisions of the 
gospel by which all believers are made "one in Christ 
Jesus ; " and tends to the establishment of a class 
religion, a kind of caste in the kingdom of God. The 
part of the community who are responsible slave- 
holders furnish but a very small proportion of the 
members of the churches where slavery exists. Pro- 



tai: i'AMiLir and slaverv. 23 

bably ninety-nine out of every hundred slatreholdef s 
are men, and the fact can not be disj^uted, that they 
generally neglect religion, and leave it in a great 
degree to the women, the children, and the slaves. 

The analytical course pursued in this investigation 
as to the effects of slavery on the Family, makes an 
extended discussion of its consequent bearings on 
society unnecessary. Whatever impairs the vitality 
-of the heart enfeebles the whole system, whatever 
paralyzes the head prostrates all the members of the 
body; whatever poisons the fountain makes every rill 
from it a channel of death. The Family is the head, 
the heart, the fountain of society, and it has not 
a privilege that slavery does not nullify, a right 
that it does not violate, a single facility for imj)rove- 
ment it does not counteract, nor a hope that it does 
not put out in darkness. Those who impose and those 
who endure the bondage, alike suffer. 'No approxi- 
mation can bo made to a safe, happy, and prosperous 
state of society where this evil-working institution is 
legalized and defended. 

It will not be denied that slaves are in a more 
favorable condition in this country than in the midst 
of the deep barbarism of Africa, nor that God has 
overruled the wickedness that brought them here, so 
far as to bring them partially under the influence of 
the gospel, by which some are saved. Full credit 
should also be awarded to such masters as strive to 
mitigate the severities, and prevent the atrocities 
which naturally grow out of the system. But it is 
strenuously contended that the system is founded on 
a false moral principle, that its legitimate results are 
ahvays evil, that it cannot be modified so as ever per- 
manently to work well, and that the welfare of all 
concerned in it imperatively demands that it should 
come to an end. It is not "in the main a good system 



^^ THE FAMILY AND SLAVERY. 

With incidental abuses." Its fundamental principle is 
^self an abuse, all the workings of it are abusesf and 
when all abuses are removed, slavery will cease 

These words are not written in ignorance of the 
practical difficulties which surround this subject: but 
with the conviction that there can be no difficulty 
from which deliverance may not be found by ceaseless 
prayer for divine direction, combined with vigilance 
and activity in performing duty, as far as Providence 
shall make it known. 

Slavery is so great a social and political evil be- 
cause It is radically a moral one. Like consumption 
It IS a disease of the whole system, incapable of re- 
moval by partial and local remedies. It must be ex 
purgated or it will bring on death. It is simply one 
of the developments of human selfishness, and one of 
the methods in which one class of men treat another 
and a weaker class wrong. It must be removed 
chiefly by moral means. Whatever will destroy sel- 
lishness and implant the love of rectitude will remove 
It, and nothing else can do it. And while no remedy 
that will m any measure aff'ect the evil should be left 
untried, the main reliance should always be placed on 
those never-failing means of reform, Avhen wisely and 
perseveringly tried, " The AYord of God and Prayer." 

NOTICE. 

m A . ^ -^pril, 1857. 

_ The American Refom Tract and Book Society is progressing 
m efforts to spread Truth and Godliness, and promote action on 
! fT,1 """•''' I™^"""^' ''"d ■^<"-'= esP-^cially the great question 
of Freedom and Slavery. Some thirty Tracts and fifteen Books 
have been published. Arrangements are made for increasing this 
number just as fast as funds are provided 

Qffic, and Dcpcitory, A'o. 28 West Fou^a Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 

^^"'"^ S^f-OKM TRACT AND BOOK SOCIETY, ClN^^^^I^T^^i^ 

S4 W . 



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